Have some (possibly very) old speakers with ruined foam surrounds? Want to save some cash and get down with some simple DIY? Well, you have come to the right place. Welcome to week two of our easy vintage (or just plain old) speaker resurrection. Click on…

What You Need

Instructions

1. After you have glued up the new foam surround to the cone of the woofer, run your finger around it from time to time to make sure the glue is adhering properly to the two parts. We had a couple spots that would make a quiet crackling sound every time our finger would rub over them indicating that the glue was not meeting up between the two parts. Eventually persistent rubbing got rid of the sound. Let everything sit overnight.

2. Next yer gunna wanna use some rubbin’ alcohol to clean the rim of the basket- it’s old, a little oily from your fingers and will likely still have some glue left on it. Get some cotton balls or something to wipe it down with. We used TP and it worked ok- not the best option.

3. This part is bien importante so listen up. There is a bevy of shims that come in the kit that basically look like are rectangular pieces of plastic. Slide three shims into the space twixt the voice coil former and the pole piece under where the dust cap used to be. Space them out evenly so they keep the cone evenly spaced from the pole piece. It is going to seem really tight sliding them in and you may fear that you might break something, but just be gentle and remember that… oh nevermind, there is no way this sentence will ever sound decent. Just do it.

4. After you have your shims in you must lift the cone slightly until the top edge matches, or is slightly above, the rim of the basket. You do this so the surround, when glued, will not be under artificial stress during drying that will ultimately cause it to flex unevenly under load (with music playing).

5. Now apply glue to both surfaces where they will meet: around the bottom flat area of the foam surround and the top surface of the basket. Apply thinly, but make sure they are both totally covered- remember this is an airtight seal… more or less. Allow to dry for five or so minutes and then EVENLY press the foam down onto the basket- we had a bezel that came with our woofer, so we just pressed down with that and then ran our dainty, carefully manicured fingers around the rim over and over until the glue was properly adhered. Let this dry overnight.

6. Now pull the shimmy shim shims out and glue the dust cap on using the same pattern as before. The dust cap prevents dust from getting inside the voice coil and it really doesn’t matter whether it looks good or not. Sure, if it is super perfectly shaped and has just the right weight your music will go from awesome to outright heavenly, but WHATEVZ audio nerds, this is about thrifty resurrection and DIY pride. You might even try to make your own little clever dust cap for fun. A little paper mache, perhaps?

Next time we will reassemble the speaker and refurbish the cabinet… unless someone thinks the hand painted green should stay!?!?!